The class of which I have now to treat, including as it does the
street-sellers of coal, coke, tan-turf, salt, and sand, seem to have
been called into existence principally by the necessities of the
poorer classes. As the earnings of thousands of men, in all the slop,
“slaughter-house,” or “scamping” branches of tailoring, shoe-making,
cabinet-making, joining, &c. have become lower and lower, they are
compelled to purchase the indispensable articles of daily consumption
in the smallest quantities, and at irregular times, just as the
money is in their possession. This is more especially the case as
regards chamber-masters and garret-masters (among the shoemakers)
and cabinet-makers, who, as they are small masters, and working on
their own account, have not even such a regularity of payment as the
journeyman of the slop-tailor. Among these poor artizans, moreover,
the wife must slave with the husband, and it is often an object with
them to save the time lost in going out to the chandler’s-shop or the
coal-shed, to have such things as coal, and coke brought to their very
doors, and vended in the smallest quantities. It is the same with the
women who work for the slop-shirt merchants, &c., or make cap-fronts,
&c., on their own account, for the supply of the shopkeepers, or the
wholesale swag-men, who sell low-priced millinery. The street-sellers
of the class I have now to notice are, then, the principal purveyors of
the very poor.
The men engaged in the street-sale of coal and coke--the chief articles
of this branch of the street-sale--are of the costermonger class,
as, indeed, is usually the case where an exercise of bodily strength
is requisite. Costermongers, too, are better versed than any other
street-folk in the management of barrows, carts, asses, ponies, or
horses, so that when these vehicles and these animals are a necessary
part of any open-air business, it will generally be found in the hands
of the coster class.
Nor is this branch of the street-traffic confined solely to articles of
necessity. Under my present enumeration will be found the street-sale
of _shells_, an ornament of the mantel-piece above the fire-grate to
which coal is a necessity.
The present division will complete the subject of Street _Sale_ in the
metropolis.